Why do humans have to wipe their butts but animals don't?

One day, you rushed to the bathroom and suddenly realized that you forgot to bring toilet paper. As you were desperate, your cat walked into the bathroom gracefully with a mocking look on his face.

You squat on the toilet, feeling the coolness of your butt and feeling indignant: Why do humans have to wipe their butts after they poop, but animals don’t?

Wiping your butt, the price of walking upright

The first thing that needs to be corrected is that animals don’t completely refuse to wipe their butts.

Take your cat for example, 10% of its life is spent "cleaning" itself. Its tongue is covered with many papillae, and when the cat licks various parts of its body, they comb out dirt and parasites like a small comb.

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As for why humans need to wipe their butts, it may be traced back to millions of years ago when our ancestors began to learn to walk on two legs, achieving the transformation from "ape to man."

Walking upright freed humans' hands, allowing them to gain stronger survival capabilities and the possibility of reproducing in a wider range of areas. However, the gift given by fate had already been secretly marked with a price.

Since the spine becomes the load-bearing device for the head, upper limbs and torso, it is squeezed for a long time, which makes your lumbar discs prone to damage and back pain. At the same time, the lower limbs also bear more pressure, making you suffer from foot pain and knee injuries.

Similarly, the problem of pooping has become one of the costs of walking upright.

In order to maintain the stability of the body and prevent falling forward, humans have developed strong gluteus maximus muscles that wrap around the buttocks. The anus located in the midline of the buttocks is hidden, so when defecating, excrement is more likely to remain in the buttocks.

Long-term dirt residue, coupled with a relatively closed environment, provides a breeding ground for bacteria, which can easily cause anorectal diseases such as anal itching, anal eczema, and even hemorrhoids. Therefore, you really need to wipe your butt for health reasons.

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In contrast, animals that walk on four legs do not have such troubles. Because their torsos and legs form an angle, their buttocks are at the corner, and their anuses are clearly visible, so they can defecate cleanly and conveniently, and they can also ventilate after defecation.

But we have to admit that walking upright does give us flexible hands, making it easy for us to use tools to wipe our butts.

Feces is their treasure.

In addition, another reason why humans need to wipe their butts is that as a higher organism, humans no longer have any special needs for feces. For some animals, these excrement may be the "treasure" they rely on for survival.

For example, when a hippopotamus defecates, it will shake its tail quickly to spread the feces around to protect its territory.

Some small and medium-sized herbivorous mammals treat "feces" as "daily food". Take rabbits, for example. They will excrete soft feces during the day and quickly swallow them, and then excrete harder feces again at night. Since the soft feces are swallowed by rabbits, what you usually see are hard feces from rabbits.

For rabbits, eating their own soft feces can help them get more nutrients. Data show that the crude protein content in rabbit soft feces is 230-335g/kg, which can provide 15%-22% of the daily protein intake.

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In addition, the protein in soft stools is also rich in essential amino acids. Rabbits can obtain 83% niacin, 100% riboflavin, 165% pantothenic acid and 42% vitamin B12 from soft stools.

When food is scarce, eating feces can also reduce hunger. Especially for rabbits living in the wild, it can prolong their lives for up to a week without water or food.

In contrast, as humans, we no longer need to use feces to mark territory, and it has become easy to obtain food and nutrition. Eating four or five meals a day, milk tea, barbecue and hot pot have become standard for many people.

Toilet paper, the savior of mankind

It can be said that feces has become a symbol of uselessness and even filthiness for humans.

American scholars believe that the disgust for feces may reflect an intuition of humans towards microorganisms, which reduces the probability of us ingesting pathogenic microorganisms.

But before toilet paper was invented, people racked their brains to remove this filth.

Due to different customs and climatic conditions, people use various natural materials for wiping, such as stones, shells, animal fur, etc. are all usable tools.

In ancient Rome, people also invented a tool similar to a toilet brush to wipe their buttocks. This tool consists of a stick and a sponge soaked in vinegar or salt water. After each use, it is washed with water and then placed in a vinegar bucket for disinfection, so it can be reused.

China actually used toilet paper much earlier than the West. In the early 14th century, Zhejiang Province alone produced 1 million bundles of toilet paper each year.

In contrast, Western countries did not have the first modern commercial toilet paper until 1857. This toilet paper was made of Manila hemp paper and was in a sheet structure. Because it was soaked in aloe vera juice, the toilet paper became softer, and its inventor Joseph C. Gaity even claimed that this toilet paper could effectively prevent hemorrhoids. As for the toilet paper roll we are familiar with, it was not mass-produced in the United States until 1890.

The toilet paper roll was first patented in 1871 and mass production began in 1890. / Hagley Museum & Library

Today's toilet paper has evolved into a variety of production raw materials such as cotton pulp, wood pulp, straw pulp and waste paper pulp. It has become an indispensable and even vital part of our lives.

Data shows that in 2018, an American used an average of 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, while the average Chinese person used 49 rolls of paper per year, weighing 4.4 kilograms.

No one can imagine what the world would be like without toilet paper.

Source: Inspur Studio

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